Three mice visit a museum and learn that sculpture comes in all shapes, sizes, and textures

This book offers definitions of the techniques, processes, and materials used in the production of postclassical European sculpture. Concise and readable explanations of the technical terms most frequently encountered by the museum-goer are presented in an easily portable format. With numerous illustrations drawn from the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum - most of them in color - this volume will be indispensable to all readers wishing to increase their enjoyment and understanding of European sculpture.

... This book has been written to help you discover what the eye of the photographer can teach you . You may become an inspired photographer can teah you. You may become an inspired photographer after reading this book, or become a collector of photographs, or become a more appreciative visitor to photographic exhibitions in museums and galleries. Any of these will have made this book worthwhile. But even more important is the hope that your life may be enriched by the art of seeing ...

Sometimes seeing is more difficult for the student of art than believing. Taylor, in a book that has sold more than 300,000 copies since its original publication in 1957, has helped two generations of art students "learn to look." This handy guide to the visual arts is designed to provide a comprehensive view of art, moving from the analytic study of specific works to a consideration of broad principles and technical matters. Forty-four carefully selected illustrations afford an excellent sampling of the wide range of experience awaiting the explorer. The second edition of Learning to Look includes a new chapter on twentieth-century art. Taylor's thoughtful discussion of pure forms and our responses to them gives the reader a few useful starting points for looking at art that does not reproduce nature and for understanding the distance between contemporary figurative art and reality.

Learning to Look at Sculpture is an accessible guide to the study and understanding of three dimensional art. Sculpture is all around us: in public parks, squares, gardens and railway stations, as part of the architecture of buildings, or when used in commemoration and memorials and can even be considered in relation to furniture and industrial design. This book encourages you to consider the multiple forms and everyday guises sculpture can take. Exploring Western sculpture with examples from antiquity through to the present day, Mary Acton shows you how to analyse and fully experience sculpture, asking you to consider questions such as What do we mean by the sculptural vision? What qualities do we look for when viewing sculpture? How important is the influence of the Classical Tradition and what changed in the modern period? What difference does the scale and context make to our visual understanding? With chapters on different types of sculpture, such as free-standing figures, group sculpture and reliefs, and addressing how the experience of sculpture is fundamentally different due to the nature of its relationship to the space of its setting, the book also explores related themes, such as sculpture¿s connection with architecture, drawing and design, and what difference changing techniques can make to the tactile and physical experience of sculpture. Richly illustrated with over 200 images, including multiple points of view of three dimensional works, examples include the Riace bronzes, Michelangelo¿s David, Canova¿s The Three Graces, medieval relief sculptures, war memorials and works from modern and contemporary artists, such as Henry Moore, Cornelia Parker and Richard Serra, and three-dimensional designers like Thomas Heatherwick. A glossary of critical and technical terms, further reading and questions for students, make this the ideal companion for all those studying, or simply interested in, sculpture.

This lavish book documents the developments in the field of fiber-related art over the past half century. The 1960s saw a revolution in fiber art. Where once the focus was on knotting, twining, and coiling thread into works that were immediately recognizable, and therefore connected to utilitarian crafts, fiber artists of the later 20th-century began to experiment with abstract forms that were closer to sculpture than craft. Influenced by postmodernist ideas, these works are the product of experimentation with materials and technique while at the same time confronting important cultural issues. This book traces that development from the mid-twentieth century to the present. In the words of Bauhaus weaver Anni Albers, the expressive quality of fiber is essentially a "language of thread." That language is beautifully displayed in full-color spreads and individual illustrations in this book. Scholarly essays address the feminist movement of the 1970s; the expanded use of materials in the '80s and '90s; and the more recent employment of fiber as one more material in the creation of freestanding works. In addition to a section of full color illustrations, this book also includes profiles of all of the genre's most influential artists.

The human form has inspired some of the finest sculpture in art history. It also evokes in the viewer complex reactions. Looking at magnificent nude sculptures by Michelangelo, Rodin, Henry Moore, and other great artists, we are in awe of the beauty and power of the art, as well as of the nude figure. But we may also experience other emotions, perhaps uncomfortably close to those we feel when we see an unclothed human body. This astonishing work provides a visual survey of nude sculpture throughout the ages, enhanced by an illuminating essay by noted critic Vicki Goldberg probing our various responses to this most realistic art form.While photographs distance us from the art works they depict, they also offer close-up details that permit us to see nude sculptures in new and surprising ways. Photographer David Finn, who has expanded the way we look at art in Abrams' How-to-Look-at titles, enables us -- through his remarkable photographs -- to glimpse the sculptor's creative process as well as the qualities of presence, texture, and detail that give the finest sculpture its grace and majesty.